Executive Coaching with
Backbone and Heart

A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges

Excerpt from
CHAPTER NINE
Making a Strategic Transition to the Role of Executive Coach

This chapter is for those of you who are organizational consultants and trainers and who want to move more into the role of executive coach from where you are right now. This assumes that you have the necessary traits of an executive coach --those that have been explored in the book-- such as the following:

  • You hold a systemic perspective.

  • You have a strong sense of self. You are not intimidated by people in positions of authority.

  • You are business and results focused.

  • You can move conversations from the global to the specific.

  • You can give immediate feedback.

  • You are equally able to support and challenge.

  • You have a sense of humor about human foibles.

  • You can let others create their own successes and mistakes.

Typical questions and dilemmas people have in making this transition include the following:

  • What do I do when I have a leader who doesn't know how to use me as a coach?

  • How do I start from where I am now? How do I create an opportunity?

  • What if the leader has a completely different map for change and my role within that change?

  • How do I deal with the leader's resistance to spending time on coaching?

  • How do I get the leader to see me differently?

  • How can I ensure the leader has a first successful experience of me as her coach?

  • How do I deal with an "inadequate" or weak leader?

  • How can I help the leader to see my coaching role as leverage for her to reach greater effectiveness?

Chapter Nine outlines an approach you can take to move more into an executive coaching role when the leader with whom you work only sees you in the other organizational positions.

 

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